Women suffer under Egypt's radical rule – in pictures

Women suffer under Egypt's radical rule – in pictures

Photographer
Gary Calton and reporter
Tracy McVeigh travelled with
Plan Egypt to cover the story of the women taking to the streets, opposing a new constitution that sweeps away their rights and opens the way for girls of 13 to be married. Their protests bring them into violent confrontation with government supporters

Saturday 30 March 2013 20.06 EDT

An anti-government protester yells in defiance as teargas pellets are fired into the crowd by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood during clashes at Mokattam in Cairo

Rasmia Ahmed Emam was 17 when she was married to a 50-year-old stranger. Not an uncommon fate for an Egyptian woman but Rasmia's family had been conned. She had been married to a Saudi sex tourist who left her and the country after two weeks. "My life is over. Everyone thinks I am a prostitute and my only option in life is to become one. But I will not do that."

For the wealthier women of Cairo marriage comes later but they fear the scrapping of the legal marriage limit will start to affect their lives and rights too. A newly married couple wait to have their wedding photographs taken in a studio in Giza

Ice-cream seller in Manial Sheiha. Few women are allowed out of their houses without their husband's permission and behind many doors are dozens of tragic tales of young women whose lives have been destroyed by the effects of early marriage.

Karema, 19, who was forced to undergo female genital circumcision aged 13. Her mother bribed a doctor to perform the procedure without anaesthetic. Although both FGM and underage marriage are presently illegal, they are widespread across the country. An estimated three quarters of females aged from 12 upwards have been subjected to FGM. The present government has indicated FGM is a "family matter" and proposes to reduce the legal age of marriage from 18 to 13

Wedding dresses in a store in Giza are only for wealthier families who can afford to allow their daughters to marry a little later although there is still enormous pressure on girls to marry young and to think of a life inside the home rather than outside of it

Anti-government protesters run as shots ring out and missiles fly during an ambush on the marchers by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The demonstrators were on their way to join a bigger protest outside the Muslim Brotherhood's new HQ in Mokattam

A 12-year-old girl at a women's group in Manial Sheiha, run by the charity
Plan Egypt. At the moment she faces a grim future of poverty, underage marriage and female circumcision. Women's groups in Egypt hoped the 2011 revolution might bring positive changes to women's rights but now fear the opposite is true